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WILLIE GEIST: “You've seen reaction around the world to the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. It hasn’t been kind from our allies, it hasn’t been kind from a lot people here in the United States. Could you just summarize for our viewers the decision that was made to pull out and why we did it?”

ADMINISTRATOR PRUITT: “When you look at what was agreed to in Paris, it put this country, our country at a disadvantage economically. Despite the fact, that we had taken several significant steps since the early-1990s with respect to reducing the co2 footprint. We're at pre-1994 levels with our co2 footprint. From 2000 to 2014, we reduced co2 emissions by 18-plus percent. We’ve been leading by action, in my estimation. What Paris represented was a commitment to achieve things that were unachievable. The previous administration, with every step they took in their climate action agenda, still fell 40% short of those 26 to 28% targets. What the decision was about was simply sending the message we're leading with action, not with words. We're going to make sure we put America first with respect to these decisions and continue to export our innovation and technology to the rest of the world with respect to how to reduce the co2 footprint.”

President Trump’s Work To Create American Jobs

ADMINISTRATOR PRUITT: “The last seven months we've had a growing job market in the mining sector, including coal. We’ve had almost 50,000 jobs created since the 4th Quarter, of last year in the mining sector, including coal. We see actually optimism in that sector. Here is the deal: I really believe that we have to focus on the stability and security of our grid and make sure that as utility companies generate electricity, they generate electricity from a variety of sources, diverse sources to maintain that security.”

America Has Made Tremendous Enviromental Progress

ADMINISTRATOR PRUITT: “So what happens when Germany goes all renewable? When they go away from nuclear and they go away from all of the fossil fuels, what happens to the cost of electricity in Germany?”

STEVE RATTNER: “Germany has a terrible, Germany, has a terrible energy policy and I will agree with you on that.”

ADMINISTRATOR PRUITT: “What happens to the economy in those countries? For developed nations, for growing economies in this world, we have nothing to be apologetic about. We have a strong, strong approach to reducing emissions and have demonstrated that from 2000 to 2014 as I indicated. We have nothing to be apologetic about.”